Góð grein í erlendu blaði

Greinin er birt hér: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1241184/How-idiots-London-let-cod-fishers-make-fools-us.html

 Should you happen to live in Leicester, and woke up this morning to hear that you, your children and grandchildren were responsible for £35billion of debt, the idea might take some of the fun out of the breakfast cornflakes. It is one thing to get a hefty post-Christmas credit card bill or fall behind with mortgage repayments. But £35billion? I mention Leicester because the city's population of 300,000 is around the same as that of Iceland. The collapse of that tiny country's overblown banking system has left the country with a hangover far more terrifying than that of Britain. Opposition: Hundreds of people gather outside Mr Grimsson's Reykjavik home to protest against the bill The local currency, the krona, has halved in international value. Wages have been cut, jobs lost. The economic future looks black, with credit available only at punitive interest rates. They are good and mad about what has happened. In a country where crime scarcely exists, the cars and houses of 'the Vikings' - the big financial wizards who drove their banks to destruction - have been vandalised. Icelanders now call themselves the 'Iceslaves', in token of the vast debt burden they must labour for decades to pay off. And this week, the country made a gesture of defiance towards the outside world. Its president, Olafur Grimsson, vetoed a parliamentary bill which would have allowed Iceland eventually to repay £3.66billion owed to its British and Dutch government creditors. Tomorrow, Iceland's parliament will arrange the terms of a national referendum on the bill, which it is almost cerby tain to face popular rejection. Most Icelanders do not care that this will threaten their lifesaving loans from the International Monetary Fund. They shrug at the notion of seeing Iceland's bonds being reduced to junk status. They are unmoved by their prospective EU membership being denied, their international status in the doghouse. They simply refuse to accept responsibility for liabilities which will wreck their lifestyles, because of the follies of a few reckless tycoons - and the whole international regulatory system. They claim that the terms demanded by the British and Dutch governments - which have refunded the lost cash of savers in their countries - are extortionate. The Icelanders' threatened strike - which is what their rejection of the bill will amount to - goes to the heart of the ongoing debate around the world about who takes the rap and bears the cost of the financial crisis. Technically, there is no doubt that Iceland's big banks, which went bust and had to be nationalised, are responsible for the money they took in. But some of us have more than a smidgeon of sympathy for the Icelanders' plight. What was the entire international financial system, and the regulators supervising it, thinking of when they allowed a volcanic wasteland that Warren Buffett could buy himself as a Christmas present to masquerade as a global banking centre? British savers, and dozens of local authorities, deposited hundreds of millions of pounds with Icelandic banks because they offered higher interest rates than anybody else. They chose to believe in Santa Claus because Moodys credit agency gave Iceland a top Triple A rating, while the EU and Bank of England nodded wisely and endorsed the place as a safe haven for cash. They were all bonkers, of course. I have been to Iceland several times. The salmon-fishing is wonderful. If you like shaggy ponies, volcanic hot springs, permanent summer daylight and Scandinavian-cuisine, it is a great holiday destination. More... Collapse of Icelandic banks has put town halls' £830m in the red But Reykjavik, the capital, looks a serious city only to those who have never travelled further south than Inverness, and who think the night life of, say, Fort William really hums. We are all so keen on devolution, rights of minorities and national sovereignty that we kid ourselves places like East Timor and Iceland are proper countries with economies and ambassadors abroad - and even, heaven help us, major international banks. In truth, they are mere offshore communities, which can manage their own affairs perfectly satisfactorily as long as they do not try to play out of their league. Defiance: Iceland's President Olafur Ragnar Grimsson At the height of the recent Icelandic boom, its banks were borrowing in dollars, which rendered them hopelessly exposed when their own currency fell through the floor. The only real assets Iceland possesses are fish, a superannunuated pop singer named Bjork and a nice line in sweaters. This did not stop the world's bankers and regulators from treating-Iceland's other financial institutions as major players, thanks to the overarching delusion that the whole international system was too closely interlocked for any part of it to collapse. Instead, as the wretched Icelanders have now discovered, 300,000 people need to knit an awful lot of sweaters to pay off £35billion. Many people in Britain still do not seem to grasp the fact that we, too, will have to meet the vast bills for our own bankers' failures, as soon as the election is over and we have a responsible government which recognises the horror of our predicament. True, Iceland is incomparably smaller, and its per capita debts much bigger. But the principle is the same. Taxpayers are left to suffer the consequences of the financial crisis, while those who contrived it walk away. I am sometimes accused of hammering in print too hard and often at bankers, who today maintain their obscene levels of personal reward after committing follies for which every citizen of Britain and America will suffer consequences for years. Yet it seems right to keep making the point, as long as the guilty walk free and rich. European and American regulators who indulged Iceland's banks seem more deserving of blame than the Icelandic people, who merely provided the stage set for a huge financial nonsense. Would you trust Leicester City Council with responsibility for overseeing banks dealing in tens of billions? No? It was equally silly to suppose tiny Iceland's incurably provincial government a credible guarantor for such sums. Whatever manoeuvres now take place between Iceland and its creditors, I shall be surprised if the British and Dutch governments get back the cash with interest over 15 years which they are demanding. Legally, the Icelanders have not a leg to stand on. But I save my anger for the idiots in New York, London and other European capitals who allowed the cod fishers to make fools of us as well as themselves